5 Reasons to be Wary of Cheap Voice-Overs

My husband recently took my 11-year-old son to get a new pair of shoes. He just needed some all-purpose, everyday sneakers to wear to school, so they headed to a popular brand name shoe store known for discount prices, hopefully to get a deal around half of what the mall stores would cost. They came home with the same style of shoe that my son had been wearing for the past several months, and they’d gotten a good price for them. We were expecting these to last the rest of the school year and probably a ways into the the summer.

Fast forward just a few weeks and my husband noticed the bottom of my son’s shoes while he was kicking back on the couch. The treads were already wearing out. Less than a month of wear and tear and they were already looking like they needed replacement. My husband vowed that he would never buy shoes at that retailer again.

The old adage, “you get what you pay for” proven true once again.

When You’re Looking For Value, Don’t Go for Cheap

One of the first things many professionals learn about marketing is to never use the word “cheap.” Although cheap can technically mean inexpensive, the word comes with the connotation of being chintzy, inferior or, to put it bluntly, a piece of cr@p.

Yet do a Google search on the term “cheap voiceovers” and you’ll get about 431,000 results – with a handful of ads actually paying to be positioned at the top of what could be considered the chintzy, inferior, doo-doo list.

This is not to say that sometimes cheap voice-overs may be just what a client needs for a short-term, non-essential project. But they’re not something that can typically sustain a company (or the entire voice-over industry) for the long-haul.

Here are the top five reasons why you need to be wary of cheap voiceovers:

Right after learning to NOT use the word “cheap,” business professionals often learn about what is sometimes called the “Project Management Triangle.” The triangle features the three points of:

Price (Cheap)

Service (Fast)

Quality (Good)

The generally accepted rule of thumb is that for any given project, you can only have two of the three characteristics fulfilled. That means if you’re already picking “cheap” as your main criteria, you either have to sacrifice the “quality” or the “service.”

Cheap and fast probably WON’T be good.

Cheap and good probably WON’T be fast.

Fast and good is going to cost more for both benefits; so it probably WON’T be cheap.

2. Cheap Voiceovers Are Decimating the Voiceover Industry.

Cheap voice-over rates are beginning to decimate the overall voiceover industry on several levels. They’re driving good-quality talent out of the industry while they’re also decreasing the value of the work.

Value is generally more important than price in any industry, and you’re not likely to be getting a good value with a super-low voice-over rate. Voice-over talent that can offer value won’t be able to compete with super-low prices, leaving the bottom end of the scale wide open for those who may not have the value but do have the flexibility (or desperation) to give you the insanely cheap rates. These are often also the same voice-over talent who have the least amount of experience and training.

When value is at the foundation:

Talent creates value for a client

Value builds loyalty

Loyalty builds growth, profit and more value

The cycle continues, resulting in profits to the talent and supreme value to the client with the production and delivery of top-notch work.

When a cheap price is put at the foundation:

Talent quotes cheapest price for a client

Client finds even cheaper price that undercuts the first one

First talent needs to go lower or drop out altogether

The cycle continues, resulting in cheaper and cheaper rates, and a mad flurry for the talent to produce as much work as quickly as possible in a frenzied attempt to make a profit (think Fiverr). Clients here are generally left with poor-quality work born out of the need for quantity and speed rather than quality and value.

This is the proverbial “race to the bottom” and there are no winners of this race.

3. They require tons of extra effort on your part.

Ever accidentally drop something valuable in the trash, and then have to spend an extended amount of time rooting through garbage to get to your valuable item? That’s kind of what slogging through the hundreds and hundreds of cheap voice-over talent auditions or demos can be like – and there’s not even a guarantee you’ll find a gem hidden amongst the debris.

We’ve heard stories of clients who have listened to as many as 200 auditions from cheap voice-over sites before finally finding a voice they could work with. Others have pegged at least 80 percent of the auditions they typically receive from such sites as totally useless. On a positive note, the uselessness is generally apparent within the first two or three seconds of the recording, which means you can at least delete it rather rapidly.

4. Going cheap may cost more in the long run.

Even though you may end up with, say, a quote of $100 for a project that a professional voice-over artist would normally do for more like $500, you can’t count up your $400 savings just yet. Going with cheap voice-over talent means you have a high likelihood of spending much more time and effort:

Sifting through dozens of auditions

Coaching or directing inexperienced talent through the recording process

Enduring multiple takes or do-overs when the final product doesn’t measure up

Scrapping the end result altogether and hiring an experienced pro to get it done right

Quality: Such as solid voice and acting training, experience on stage and behind the mic, and hundreds of satisfied clients.

Convenience: Such as rapid turn-arounds, easy scheduling and even easier recording session options based on a client’s wants and needs.

While cheap voice-overs may at a glance appear to be a good deal, you’re ultimately likely to sacrifice quality, convenience, special features, specialized training, years of experience and the overall value of the product. And that’s without even mentioning your additional sacrifices of time, effort and peace of mind.

In voice-over casting, as in most everything else, you get what you pay for. For an end result that saves you time and effort, makes you look good to your client or boss, and still gives you the value you need, opt for great service and great quality, and you’ll be a much happier consumer in the long run.

Comments

This is an article I will be passing on… I got an email yesterday from a woman, I’ll leave unnamed. She’s decided she’s going to be a Voice Talent, with little or no experience, but, she says she has a “nice voice”.
She asked me what she has to do to be the next “media darling” on Voices.com.

That perturbed me, just a tad, because that is NOT what this business is about. She had no clue how to actually run a business and I guess she, like tens of thousands of others, has decided all she needs is a “pleasant voice” and she’s got it made in the shade.

While I understand that this nice lady wants to do this for a living, it’s people like this that are driving down the prices — hence, those of us who have worked in this business for years, are lost in the trash can, as was written very well in this article.

I honestly don’t understand this type of thinking. This business, like running any other business, requires us not only to deliver our product with excellence, but also to understand that success doesn’t usually come overnight, and that we wear a lot of hats… I, like you all, have to take off my Voice Actor’s hat and put on my marketing hat, then my accounting hat…. and the list goes on.

Please know, this is not a slam against anyone who honestly wants to get into this business. But, there is a process. And it does not start with being Voices.com’s “new media darling” — just my two cents.

Thanks for reading and commenting Lauren. It’s always good to hear your take, from a real veteran perspective. Certainly, there are lots of folks that want to enter VO (just like acting, or music, or many creative arts) who have no clue about what it actually takes to make it past the first round. I heard some statistic in a documentary that 90% of people moving to LA to become an actor will leave within 2 years. So, most find out fairly quickly that it’s not as easy as it looks. And those that continue, have to figure out how to make themselves attractive to the people who are hiring/casting…and market, and get sales tools in place, and navigate agents and on and on. I agree, there is a never ending process, and the rules keep changing, with added social media pressure/presence, maintaining a website and a blog, etc. So, for those who think “everybody tells me what a great voice I have” – it’s a far cry from actually making money with it. And while there are newbies who will come in and quote a project at the bottom end, often, the client gets what they pay for, as Howard points out in his comment below. That’s why they call it “show BUSINESS”. Only the strong survive.

All spot on, including Lauren’s reply. We had an ‘affordable’ plumber fix our boiler. Oh, he got it working. But he left without closing down a test valve. That would have become truly expensive: just in time I saw the pressure dial heading for red.
Anyone can make mistakes, but in a biz like ours where we learn every day we reach a point where we can insulate our clients from most mishaps, and indeed often help them over such things as file type, processing, pronunciation, colloquialisms. That’s added value for sure.

Hey Howard – thanks for pointing out a great example of how service and value go together, at a fair price. And for also qualifying all the things that a true pro will navigate for a new producer, that they’re not even aware of. Great comment.